Chapter 23
Bram
I sneak a quick glance through the sneeze guard, right over the trays of food, and still, trying to become one with the buffet.
The last thing I need is for Luna to notice a six-foot-four kitchen hand in a hairnet gawking at her.
I take a slow breath, trying to draw her scent in, but the distance is too wide. The kitchen’s steam and grease choke it out anyway.
Behind my ribs, my alpha hits my sternum, a heavy, impatient thump that makes my fingers twitch. I want to vault the stainless steel counter and walk right up to her. Still, seeing her slightly takes the edge off the itch that’s been crawling under my skin. She looks beautiful.
I step back from the sneeze guard, fading into the shadow of the prep tables, dropping the serving spoon into a bus tub and keep moving.
“Hey, new guy.” The cafeteria manager looks up from a clipboard near a steaming pot. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Break,” I say, and I don’t wait for his answer.
I push through the swinging doors into the back corridor and tear the hairnet off, stuffing it into my apron pocket. The toupee stays, mostly because I’m afraid I used too much glue and it’ll take my scalp with it.
Now I need to find the idiots I call my brothers.
The plan was simple: check on her, make sure she’s safe, grab a quick hit of her scent to take the edge off, and clear out before she ever knew we were here.
Now that I’ve found her, we can do that and get back to the orchard, where “short-handed” doesn’t even begin to cover our situation.
I stalk down a bamboo-paneled corridor toward the maintenance wing that smells like sage and floor wax. And around a corner, I find Ash.
He’s in dark blue maintenance coveralls, pushing a mop across the slate tiles with aggressive, jerky strokes. That absurd blonde mustache is still glued to his lip, twitching every time he grunts.
I stop a few feet away and cross my arms over my chest.
“Damn it,” Ash mutters, wringing the mop out into the yellow bucket with unnecessary violence. “I thought I’d be pretending to fix stuff. Look busy with a wrench. Not mopping the damn floor.”
He looks five seconds away from snapping the handle over his knee.
“Quit moping,” I tell him, and grin, pretty pleased with my pun.
Ash pauses, the mop handle still in his grip. He turns his head slowly and levels a glare at me that would probably work a lot better without the mustache.
“Ha. Ha,” he says, flat. “Good one. Glad to see the job hasn’t crushed your spirit. Real lucky for you, getting to stand behind a counter spooning mush at strangers while I do actual manual labor.”
“Well, good news. You can stop,” I say, dropping my voice so it won’t carry down the hall. “I found her.”
Ash freezes. The mop handle slips from his hands and clatters against the slate, the wet strings slapping the tiles. The annoyance drains out of his face, replaced by the same tight, quiet hunger that’s been pulling at me.
“Where?” he whispers.
“Cafeteria, just now. She looks good.” I scrub a hand over the stubble on my jaw, feeling the edge of the fake hair piece lift. “Let’s grab Reed and get close enough to smell her. Then we bail.”
Ash steps over the mop. “Let’s go.”
We navigate the labyrinth of the retreat, looking for the wellness studios. Reed’s text earlier said they put him in Studio B for an advanced class, which, by the way, I still can’t wrap my head around. The class must be hell of a carnage.
We turn another corner and, at last, we find it.
The front wall is a sheet of floor-to-ceiling glass, fogged at the top from the heat inside.
Around twenty people are twisted into pretzels on purple mats, moving to the tinny, frantic synth-beat of Olivia Newton-John’s Physical playing over the speakers.
I stop. Ash halts next to me and makes a low, strangled sound in his throat... because pacing at the front of the room, is Reed.
He’s wearing illegally short bright red shorts, a tight, sleeveless white track jacket, and a neon blue sweatband around his forehead. Miraculously, he’s still wearing the neon-taped glasses, too, which he keeps readjusting as he moves.
“Breathe into it—that’s it!” Reed’s voice comes through the glass, muffled but loud.
He claps, paces the front row, and throws one fist in the air, then the other, pumping his arms in a frantic, alternating rhythm.
“You feel that shake in your legs? That’s not pain, that’s progress!
Stay with me, you beautiful warriors—almost there, yes, you’re almost there! ”
Ash stares. “What the actual fuck?”
“Whatever this is, it’s working,” I mutter, without a hint of exaggeration. Every person in the room is locked on him, dripping sweat and straining to hold their poses, completely hooked.
I step up to the glass and rap my knuckles hard against the pane.
Reed snaps his head toward us, freezes for a second, then turns back to his class.
“Okay, hold it right there, you’re doing amazing!” he calls. “I gotta step out for one quick sec. Keep breathing, keep glowing!”
He jogs out the side door into the hallway, chest heaving, a grin plastered across his face.
“What’s up, guys?” Reed says, wiping sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. “I’m killing it in there. I think I found my calling.”
“Seems so, Richard Simmons,” Ash says, chuckling. “Very sadly, though, it’s time to go. Bram found Luna.”
Reed’s grin vanishes. His posture straightens, his eyes locking on mine with a sharp, cold focus.
“Where?” Reed asks.
“She was in the cafeteria,” I say. “So let’s go check on her, grab our scent-fix, and bail. And let’s be invisible boys, because if she catches us sneaking around in these getups, I am legitimately scared she’ll never want to talk to us ever again.”
Reed nods. He leans back into the studio, holding the door open a crack.
“Okay, everybody, that’s the work!” he yells. “You crushed it. Class dismissed, go hydrate!”
He lets the door swing shut. “Lead the way.”
The three of us head down the hall together, a pack again.
A pack made up of a lunch lady in a bad toupee, a janitor with a dead squirrel on his lip, and an aerobics instructor straight out of 1985.
I try to picture a version of us that winds up here without a biological imperative dragging us along by the nose. I come up empty.
“Shit, I think we took a wrong turn somewhere,” I say as we walk. “But the cafeteria should be this way. Come on.”
We turn down a dim, quiet corridor where the smell of burning sage is thick.
But underneath it... Gooseberries. Honey.
Mate.
All three of us slow down at the exact same time. The hit of her scent is so strong it practically punches the breath out of my lungs. Beside me, Ash makes a low, rough sound in the back of his throat. Reed’s hands curl into fists.
The scent is pouring out of the open doorway to our left. A small chalkboard beside it reads: Midday Meditation — Mindful Reset.
I hold up a hand, signaling them to stay quiet, then edge toward the doorway and peer inside. Ash and Reed flank me, looking over my shoulders.
The room is dark, lit only by a few candles. A dozen women sit cross-legged on mats with their eyes closed.
And right there, in the second row, sits Luna.
The tight band of tension that’s been wrapping around my ribs all day loosens. My eyes didn’t deceive me in the cafeteria. There she is, beautiful and serene, her eyes closed and her hair twisted up in that messy way I love.
Just a little longer, I think, breathing her in, letting my lungs fill with the gooseberry and honey. Juuust a minute to steady ourselves, and then we leave.
Then a man in oatmeal-colored linen pants steps up behind her mat. He pauses, leans down, and presses his palms flat against our mate’s collarbones.
Luna’s shoulders tighten.
A low, gravelly vibration starts in my chest. Ash and Reed answer it with their own as the instructor’s fingers slide upward, toward the nape of her neck, right over her scent gland.
Easy, I tell myself, my teeth grinding together. Bram, cool down. It’s just a class. It’s just a class—
“DON’T TOUCH HER!” Reed roars, lunging into the room.
Oh, fuck.